Social networks have provided countless individuals with the ability to reconnect with lost friends and acquaintances, stay in touch with distant friends and family, and be exposed to content they may have missed otherwise. While social networks provide a vast number of benefits to their users, they are also often of benefit to brands, agencies, advertisers, businesses and other entities interested in reaching out to new customers due to the vast user base and reach of social networks.
As a result, social networks often provide the opportunity for entities to engage their influential or highly followed users to promote a post on the social network, also sometimes referred to as a sponsored post or other indication of the post being made as part of a service. Traditionally, promoted posts are offered by an influential social media user via a social network for a cost, with the benefit being that the post is displayed to a vast number of the users of the social network, guaranteeing a wide reach for the entity.
However, while such techniques may be useful in reaching potential customers, there is currently no suitable measure for determining the actual effectiveness of such a technique. For instance, a merchant that promotes an advertisement for the merchant may experience an uptick in their business following the posting of the promoted post, but may be unable to discern if the uptick was the result of the promoted post or of other circumstances (e.g., a different advertisement, word-of-mouth, random chance, etc.). There is currently no tool capable of attributing a merchant or advertiser's list of converted users to a promoted social media post.
Thus, there is a need for a technical solution to accurately determine the marketing effectiveness of a promoted post on a social network via measurable results that can be directly attributed to the promoted post.